The present invention relates generally to computer-assisted information management, and more particularly to computer-based storing of information about a current state to facilitate later recall.
As daily life becomes even more complex, people increasingly need to effectively manage a wide variety of types of information. In particular, people need the capability to store a broad range of types of information in such a manner that the information is easily accessible when needed.
Unfortunately, people are frequently unable to remember some types of information without assistance. For example, some types of information need to be remembered frequently, but a particular instance of the information need be retained for only a limited time (e.g., the location where the car keys were last left or the location in which the car was parked this morning). For such types of information, a typical human often remembers the information when it is later needed, but at least occasionally will be unable to remember the information. Other types of information may be difficult to remember due to the volume of information or the circumstances under which it is acquired. For example, after meeting another person, many people can remember the name and face of the person, as well as other related information (e.g., a phone number or birth month). However, after meeting a large number of people at a party, a typical human remembers such information for at most a small number of the people. In other situations, people take video recordings (e.g., a still picture or a stream of video frames) or audio recordings of information which they have perceived but cannot fully remember without assistance (e.g., of a song or of beautiful scenery). For yet other types of information, the information may be sufficiently complex or may be needed so infrequently so as to prevent mental recall (e.g., credit card and frequent flier numbers, or a rarely-used numerical value such as pi).
Due to people""s inability to remember information, a variety of techniques and devices have been developed to assist people in storing and recalling information. For example, some people carry portable audio recording devices (e.g., a DICTAPHONE(copyright) device) on which audible information can be quickly stored, while others textually store information of interest on a portable medium (e.g., on a hand-held computer, on a paper-based DAY-TIMER(copyright) calendar, on POST-IT(copyright) notes, etc.). Some people may even carry video recording devices (e.g., a camera or camcorder) to record scenes or events of interest.
Unfortunately, these existing techniques and devices for storing and recalling information have various problems. Consider, for example, the situation in which a person encounters a large number of people at a party and would like to store a variety of information about each person, such as their name, face, and telephone number. Devices able to record only a single type of information, such as audio, video, or textual information, would be unable to store some of the desired information about the people encountered. If different devices were used to each store one type of information, it would be difficult to associate the different stored information and quickly retrieve the disparate pieces of information when needed. In addition, while storage devices having a linear storage mechanism (including most audio recording devices and camcorders) can quickly store large amounts of information, this form of storage mechanism makes retrieval of desired information (e.g., Bob""s telephone number and face) difficult because the only available means of searching is sequential and not indexed. Moreover, each of these techniques and devices store information only at the explicit direction of a user. Thus, if a user does not recognize the need to store information while it is available, these techniques and devices will not allow the information to be later recalled. For these and a variety of other reasons, existing techniques and devices do not fully meet the needs for storing and recalling a variety of types of information.
Some embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system for computer-based storing of information about a current state so that later recall of the information can augment human memories. In particular, when information about a current event of interest is to be stored, a variety of current state information of different types (e.g., video, audio, and textual information) about the environment, a user, and the computer can be acquired via sensors and other input devices. The variety of state information can then be associated together as a group and stored for later retrieval. Other information can also be associated with the group, such as one or more recall tags that facilitate later retrieval of the group, or one or more annotations to provide contextual information when the other state information is later retrieved and presented to the user. When information about a past event is to be recalled, one or more identifying recall tags can be received that are used to identify one or more state information groups that match the identifying tags. Some or all of the previously-acquired state information for the identified state information groups can then be presented to the user on appropriate output devices. Other information, such as annotations, can also be presented to the user in order to describe the state information and thus assist the user""s recollection of the previous state when the information was stored.
In one embodiment, a computer system has input devices capable of recording audio and video information and has output devices capable of presenting audio and video information. In this embodiment, a method for augmenting the memory of a user of the computer system involves receiving from the user a plurality of indications each indicating to store an augmented memory. An augmented memory is then stored for each of the plurality of received indications by recording indicated video information, recording from the user at least one audio recall tag related to a subject of the recorded video information, recording from the user at least one audio annotation providing descriptive information about the recorded video information, and associating the recorded video information, audio recall tag, and audio annotation as the stored augmented memory. When the user indicates that one of the stored augmented memories is to be recalled, a stored augmented memory is recalled by receiving from the user an indication of a subject, comparing the indicated subject to the recall tags of the stored augmented memories, and when the indicated subject matches a recall tag of one of the stored augmented memories, presenting to the user the recorded video information associated with the matched recall tag and presenting to the user the recorded audio annotation associated with the matched recall tag. Thus, the user can recall the video and annotation information associated with a stored augmented memory of an indicated subject.